How Loyola's Final Four run has financially benefited the Missouri Valley Conference

SportsPulse: Can Loyola-Chicago make history by beating a stacked Michigan squad? USA TODAY Sports’ Scott Gleeson says the Ramblers have a very real chance to.
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Loyola Ramblers head coach Porter Moser cuts down the net after defeating the Kansas State Wildcats in the championship game of the South regional of the 2018 NCAA Tournament at Philips Arena.(Photo: Dale Zanine, USA TODAY Sports)

Loyola’s mesmerizing run to the Final Four has been an enormous boost for the Missouri Valley Conference, a league many college basketball prognosticators wrote the obituary for following Wichita State’s departure last spring.

Perhaps the biggest lift has been financially, as the Ramblers’ NCAA Tournament surge will benefit the entire conference over the next six years.

Basketball teams that make the NCAA Tournament earn a single “unit” or “share” for each contest they play in, excluding the national title game. Those units are selected from the NCAA's basketball fund, a pool set aside from the money the NCAA earns on the tournament television deal to reward conferences for advancing in the Big Dance.

So by reaching the Final Four, the Ramblers have earned five units for the MVC. Each unit this year is worth approximately $273,000 and will be paid annually over the next six years, meaning Loyola’s run has earned the Valley about $8.2 million. Now, each MVC school is set to get about $136,500 for the next six years.

Villanova, Michigan, Loyola-Chicago & Kansas each earned $8.2 million for their conferences for playing in 5 tournament games through the Final Four. The payment from the NCAA will be paid out over the next six years. Schools don’t get paid for playing in title game.

Now, the exact number will be more than that as the value of each year’s unit usually increases by 2-3 percent every season. So the units Loyola earned in 2018 will be paid out based on the units’ values from 2019-24.

Since 2010, the MVC has only had one season in which it didn’t rack up multiple units (2011, when Indiana State was the only team in and lost its first game). But in the same timeframe, this season marks the most units the Valley has accumulated when it only had one team in the NCAA Tournament field.

The MVC had five units apiece in 2016 and 2015, but both Wichita State and Northern Iowa qualified those two seasons. The Valley’s best year in recent history came in 2013, when it earned seven units between the Shockers’ Final Four run and Creighton’s 1-1 showing.

Still, this year’s payday emerged out of nowhere, for many. It’s easy to see why the entire MVC has been rooting for Loyola all the way through.

“This was probably, for me, the most special (tournament run) in my 30 years in the league,” MVC Commissioner Doug Elgin told USA Today on Saturday. “They answered the bell in terms of, we needed to prove to the country the Missouri Valley was still relevant. And we certainly are.”

Dargan Southard covers preps, recruiting, Iowa and UNI athletics for the Iowa City Press-Citizen, The Des Moines Register and HawkCentral.com. Email him at msouthard@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter at @Dargan_Southard.